Table of ConTenTs How Scripture Came to Us Lesson 1 Scribes and Scriptures ����������������������������������������������������� 3 Jeremiah 36:4-8, 20-26, 32; Luke 1:1-4 Lesson 2 Scholars and Translators ������������������������������������������������� 8 Nehemiah 8:1, 5-8; Acts 8:26-31 Lesson 3 Misapplying Scripture �����������������������������������������������������13 2 Timothy 2:14-18, 22-26; 2 Peter 3:15-16 Lesson 4 Reading with Understanding �������������������������������������������18 Matthew 22:34-40; Acts 17:10-12 WhaT’s in Your TeaChing guide This Teaching Guide has three purposes: ‰ to give the teacher tools for focusing on the content of the session in the Study Guide. ‰ to give the teacher additional Bible background information. ‰ to give the teacher variety and choice in preparation. The Teaching Guide includes two major components: Teacher Helps and Teacher Options. Teacher Helps Bible Background The Study Guide is your main Teaching Outline source of Bible study material. provides you with an outline This section helps you more fully of the main themes in the understand and Study Guide. interpret the Scripture text. Teacher Options The next three sections provide a beginning, middle, and end for the session, with focus paragraphs in between. Focus Paragraphs are printed in italics at the top of the page because they are the most important part of the Teaching Guide. These paragraphs will help you move your class from “what the text meant” to “what the text means.” You Can Choose! There is more material in each session than you can use, so choose the options from each section to tailor the session to the needs of your group. Prepare Before the Session Read the session for today in the Study Guide� Then read the options in this Teaching Guide, placing checkmarks beside the activities you plan to include� After you have decided which options to use, gather the appropriate materials� Lesson Teaching Guide sCribes and sCripTures 1 Jeremiah 36:4-8, 20-26, 32; Luke 1:1-4 Bible Background circumstances partnered to produce the written tradition that eventually grew The Scroll is Produced in into the book of Jeremiah. Partnership (Jer 26:4-8) There was another partner in the Jeremiah lived and preached scroll’s production: a scribe named in Judah during the late Baruch (v. 4). Given the risks Baruch took seventh and early sixth centuries BC, to help deliver Jeremiah’s message, he was a very tumultuous period due to both obviously a close partner in the prophet’s internal problems and the rising power ministry. Baruch wrote what Jeremiah of Babylon. The events of Jeremiah 36 dictated on a scroll that would have been are set in “the fourth year of Judah’s King made of papyrus, a paper-like material Jehoiakim” (v. 1), which was 605–604 made of the fibers of the papyrus reed, BC. In 605 the Babylonians defeated the or parchment made from animal skin. Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish, a The scroll had a purpose beyond victory that established Babylon as the the preservation of the prophet’s words, dominant force in the region. It could be however. Echoing the words God told that those international events prompted him in verse 3, Jeremiah hoped that the Jeremiah to put these words into writ- people would turn from their sins and ing. The historical context of the passage avoid God’s judgment (v. 7). The goal of reminds us that Scripture was inspired, writing down Jeremiah’s words was to produced, developed, and preserved bring about changed lives in response to under specific circumstances. God’s message. The production of the The opening words of Jeremiah 36 scroll, like the production of the entire also remind us that God stands behind Bible, was a gift of God’s grace. the production of Scripture. “This word Jeremiah had been banned from the came to Jeremiah from the Lord,” the temple (see chs. 7 and 26), so he told Scripture says, “Take a scroll and write Baruch to read the contents of the scroll in it all the words I have spoken to you to the people. After he did so (vv. 9-10), concerning Israel, Judah, and all the some court officials had the scroll read nations from the time of Josiah until to King Jehoiakim. As the scroll was read today” (vv. 1-2). Somehow—we are not to the king, he methodically cut it into told how—God inspired Jeremiah to pieces and burned it in the wintertime fire commit to writing the content of his that blazed before him. The king’s actions many years of preaching, which previ- symbolized his utter rejection of the word ously existed only in oral form. We see of the Lord. then how God, the prophet, and historical The Scroll is Reproduced and Expanded (Jer 36:20-26) In response to the destruction of the scroll by the king and in obedience to the instruction of the Lord (36:27-28), Jeremiah dictated another scroll that contained all the words of the first scroll— I� The book of Jeremiah says that “the and even more: “many similar words were lord’s word” combined with the “words of Jeremiah” to make up the content of added to them” (v. 32). Here, our Bible prophet’s message (Jer 1:1-2)� tells us that Scripture came to us through a process of addition and revision. II� The first scroll of Jeremiah was produced Baruch was likely not the first and was in response to specific historical circum- certainly not the last scribe to work on the stances� The “fourth year of Judah’s King production and preservation of Scripture. Jehoiakim” (Jer 36:1) was 605–604 bC, In later history, two important groups of when Babylonia defeated Egypt at the scribes emerged in Jewish life. The first Battle of Carchemish� group is known as the Sopherim. Their name is derived from the Hebrew word III� The first scroll of Jeremiah was pro- meaning “book,” so they were “people duced as an effort to bridge the divide of the book.” Between the fourth between God and God’s people� century BC and the first century AD, A� It was intended to create an oppor- they copied and preserved the Hebrew tunity for repentance� text to ensure its accurate transmis- B� The first edition of Jeremiah was sion. The second group of scribes is the intended to turn people to God and Masoretes. Their name comes from the teach them how to be the people Hebrew word masorah, which means of God, which is the purpose of “hedge,” because they understood their Scripture (see 2 Tim 3:16-17)� task to be building a protective hedge around the text. The Hebrew text of IV� The second scroll of Jeremiah was pro- the Old Testament that the Masoretes duced in response to the rejection of the produced between the fifth and tenth cen- previously delivered word� turies AD (drawing on older manuscripts) V� The purpose of Luke’s Gospel was to is the basis of the text we use today. provide a trustworthy account of what The Septuagint is the Greek transla- God had done in Christ so that people tion of the Old Testament produced by could have confidence in what they Jews living in Egypt during the last two learned� God used Luke’s handling of centuries before Christ. The Septuagint previously written sources and his inten- text of Jeremiah is about one-eighth sive scholarly work to tell the story of shorter than the Masoretic text. Scholars Jesus� long believed that the Septuagint translators must have abbreviated the an example of the ways in which biblical Masoretic text during the process of texts could be in flux for centuries before translation because no shorter Hebrew becoming standardized. text was known to exist. That all changed when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discov- Luke Writes His Gospel (Luke 1:1-4) ered in 1947 and a shorter Hebrew text Luke is unique among the Gospel writers of Jeremiah was found. This discovery in that he actually says he used sources in indicated that the Septuagint was trans- the production of his book. That does not lated from a shorter Hebrew version of mean, though, that he is the only writer Jeremiah (Thompson, 117–20). The his- who did. Old Testament scholars have tory of the book of Jeremiah offers us 4 Lesson 1 long observed that the Pentateuch appears to be the result of a long period of composi- tion and editing with one part of that process being the combination of various written sources. Similarly, Luke based his work on earlier written documents (“Many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us,” v. 1) that were based on oral tradition (“They used what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us,” v. 2). The scholarly consensus is that Luke’s main written sources were the Gospel of Mark (about fifty percent of the content of Mark is also found in Luke), a “sayings source”—often referred to as Q (from the German word Quelle, meaning “source”), which helps explain why there is much material that is held in common with Luke and Matthew but is absent from Mark—and material that is found only in Luke (usually referred to as L). Luke evidently felt that he had the privilege and responsibility of improving on the material from which he drew. He told Theophilus that he had “decided to write a care- fully ordered account” for him because he wanted Theophilus “to have confidence in the soundness of the instruction” he had received (vv.